Religion and Nation-Building in the Turkish Republic: Comparison of High School History Textbooks of 1931-41 and of 1942-50

Date

2013-06-01

Author

Ari, Basar

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In the period from 1923 to 1946, the new regime was consolidated through a series of radical secularizing reforms. In order to make these reforms acceptable to a wider public, the new Republic tried to build a secular Turkish identity that does not include Islam. High school history textbooks were prepared to this end in 1931. It has generally been argued that the transition to a multi-party regime constituted a break by opening greater space for religion in society. However, the Kemalist Project to develop a secular Turkish identity without Islam ended in 1942, i.e. during the single-party rule of the Republican People's Party (RPP). The reasons behind this change show that the RPP was a more heterogeneous party in terms of the views of its policy-makers on religion.

Subject Keywords

Political Science and International Relations, History

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63905

Journal

TURKISH STUDIES

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2013.805057

Collections

Department of International Relations, Article

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Citation Formats

B. Ari, “Religion and Nation-Building in the Turkish Republic: Comparison of High School History Textbooks of 1931-41 and of 1942-50,” TURKISH STUDIES, pp. 372–393, 2013, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63905.